What is the informal fallacy “Begging the Question” in layman’s terms?
In: 95
Circular logic, “it’s good because it’s right.” Note that “begging” here is being used to mean “avoiding,” rather than “asking for.” That’s an older definition of the word, and this phrase is the last common example of it in the English language, which is fun.
EDIT: This is actually not true! Should have looked into it before posting. Turns out it’s because of an anonymous 16th century translator who chose to translate Aristotle’s line “petitio principii” as “beg the question.” You can kind of see the connection: “petitio” is obviously where we get “petition,” and in-context Aristotle was using it to mean asking for something that wasn’t earned (i.e., asking for an assumption or reasoning in their argument without spelling it out). Thus, it makes reasonable sense to a translator to turn “petition” used in this way into “beg,” and then this unknown translator happily went off and died leaving us with 500 years of mild etymological weirdness.
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It means you’ve framed the issue in a manner that assumes the truth of the conclusion you want to reach, making your argument look logical but it isn’t even really an argument. Abortion debates are often just arguments of this nature. Really, many political arguments use this fallacy, often without the participants realizing it, so everybody just talks past each other.
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Begging the question is when the thing that you’re meant to be proving is used as proof of itself. In other words it’s when you sneak the conclusion into one of your premises.
This is a problem because premises are **always** assumed to be true by default, and so by sneaking the conclusion into the premise youve defeated the point of the argument. For example:
>Premise: people discovered the earth is round
Conclusion: therefore the earth is round
The point of the argument above is to prove the earth is round, but by just declaring that it’s round in the premise, it fails to actually prove that it’s true in the conclusion. The logical proof that the earth is actually round is completely absent from that argument.
I always interpreted it as – If a statement is made, Then there’s logically a questions that needs (Or can be) asked.
‘You are worth 12 million dollars, and can afford anything you want in the world. That begs the question… Why steal that candy bar?’
The fallacy is that the first part is assumed to be true.
Phrased like this:
‘You stole a candy bar and are worth 12 million dollars, which begs the question – Why’
So there, we have assumed that you stole the candy bar and that you are worth 12 million.
Both might not be true at all, and if so means the question doesn’t make sense.
So, Clubthumb12 – Why DID you steal that candy bar? Pretty great lengths to go through for an ELI5 question 😀
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